The Curious Youth of Old Ted
by Minor God
Summary: Ralph hears some intriguing stories about his old gardener.  If anyone likes it, and reviews, there will be lots more to come!


Summary: Ralph hears some intriguing old tales about his gardener.

Disclaimer: Ralph and Ted belong to the BBC.

Author's note: It's OK for me to make fun of the Irish, because I am one of them!

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(Lord) Ralph Mayhew had never been at all popular. Ever since his mother had sighed sardonically and asked the midwife to take him away again, he had been on a steady decline of social status. Imagine his surprise, therefore, when 34 years later, an old man strolled over to his table in the pub. He was tall, but rather stooped from the shoulders, clad in a tobacco-stinking leather coat and wore his grey hair in a long grizzled plait. 

"Fucking weather," he murmured.

Ralph looked up from the flat beer he had been nursing for some hours: an Irish accent! The sound that so often fluttered his heart. But he nodded politely. The Irish man thudded down on a seat beside him and regarded him curiously. "That's a hell of a get-up you've got there, lad. You been on the hunt?"

Ralph blushed. From time to time, he was given to wonder whether tweed suits and cherry-coloured waistcoats were still well-regarded by the general populace, but in the absence of an answer, he continued to wear them. He shook his head shyly.

"Uh; each to his own." The Irish man began to roll a cigarette.

Ralph watched him tentatively for a while, reflecting on the most unusual nature of being in an almost empty pub with someone choosing to actually sit in the same room as him. At one wild instance, he checked around to make sure the Four Horsemen weren't in sight. "Are… do you live locally?" he asked at length.

"No, I'm over from Limerick. In Ireland. Looking for a couple of old friends… Well, I say a couple – I just heard that she died. So I've come looking for him, for old times' sake. Christ, it's frightening how the years creep by."

"Oh, it certainly is," agreed Ralph, who had been worrying about it all evening.

"Mick Jameson," said the other, holding out his hand.

"Ral-"

"Been in England five days now; very pretty it is. The people are a bit on-and-off, but mostly it's been grand. Still no sign of Ted, though, but I heard he was in this village."

Ralph choked. "Ted?" he cried. "Ted O'Shannon?"

"You know Ted?" Mick's eyes widened joyfully. "Glory be, am I finally in the right place?"

"Yes! Yes indeed!" Ralph replied and they shook hands again with great enthusiasm. He glanced at his pocket watch. It was quarter to ten. "It's not too late, do you want me to show you where he lives?"

Mick glanced about the empty pub, with a new glint of excitement, but his dogged determination of nationalism didn't fail him: "Shall we just finish these drinks first, lad?"

"Yes, of course. So… how did you know Ted?"

Mick grinned. "I met him when we were in the original Tipperary Amateur Theatre Club's cast of Hair, back in '68. I was Claude and he was George. And old Esther was backstage tealady. God bless her!" He raised his glass, misty-eyed.

Ralph blinked as an intriguing image of his old gamekeeper with long hair and multicoloured jeans leapt through his mind. But as he was in public, he did his best to combat it. "Ah, yes," he chanted, then stopped. "Were…" And soft leather boots, he thought. "Were you and Ted against the Gulf?"

Mick took a quick drag from his cigarette. "Hair wasn't against the Gulf, lad, it was against the Vietnam War."

"Yes of course." He cursed himself silently. "So stupid of me." A long and awkward silence elapsed, during which Mick drank deeply and wondered if Ralph was indeed a little stupid. This was more like the world Ralph knew, and he settled back down into his warm old self-doubt. "Was it a success?"

"Not bad. We lost six hundred pounds in a booking error, we trashed the hotel and we got laid about five times a night. Can't say fairer than that now, can you?"

Ralph gave a nervous laugh: "There was some frivolity, was there?"

"Frivolity?" Mick barked a laugh. "Fuck!"

Ralph twitched.

"There was wall to wall sex and drugs, lad! I could tell you things about old Ted you wouldn't be-fucking-lieve."

He took a moment to translate the last word, then said "Oh yes?" Guiltily, he felt a smile pulling at his lips. "What sort of things?"

"Oh-h! What kind of things you ask, lad? What kind of things?"

"What kind of things?" asked the lad again.

Mick removed his cigarette. "Romantic misunderstandings mainly. You know I used to hold one girl up in the corridor while he shoved another out the window."

"Is that right?"

"Ho, Lord, yes. The whole lot of us (in Hair) were locked up in this decrepit little hotel: there was plaster falling off the ceiling every day and about four of us to a room. Anyway, on the second night we were performing, I went into our room, and there was Ted, covered in Stop-The-Bomb chicks, the lucky old sod!"

Ralph cleared his throat hastily. "Why don't you have another drink? Ted should be up for a while yet?"

And once again, Mick's patriotic spirit did not fail him.

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